NHIS warns HMOs over payment of services
The Executive Secretary of the National Health Insurance Scheme (NHIS), Dr. Femi Thomas, has warned various Health Maintenance Organizations (HMOs) working with them to desist from withholding capitation payment from health care facilities or risk facing sanctions.
Thomas gave the warning when members of the National Executive Committee of the Nigerian Medical Association (NMA), led by its president, Dr. Osahon Enabulele, paid him a courtesy visit in Abuja recently.
According to the NHIS boss, “We must not allow any stakeholder to strangulate the facilities which are the burden bearers of the health Insurance industry.”
“The health care facilities must survive. And the only way they can survive is when they are paid their capitation as at when due. This, we at the NHIS will ensure,” he stated.
He told the delegation that as part of the process of ensuring probity in the system, the scheme is presently reconciling accounts of about six HMOs, and if found wanting will be answerable in accordance with the Act establishing the Scheme.
Thomas appealed to the NMA to show leadership, by calling on its members and other health workers in the public sector to begin to make their own contribution of 1.75% of their salary to the scheme, to enable it pool enough resources for the expansion of coverage and the benefit package as is being clamoured for.
Speaking earlier, the President of NMA, Dr. Osahon Enabulele, said the organisation has come to felicitate with the Executive Secretary on his appointment as the Chief Executive Officer of NHIS, and expressed the Association’s confidence that he will provide the needed leadership that will ultimately transform the health sector in the country.
“The NHIS under your leadership must not shy away from the urgent task of providing the pivotal role of championing the needed transformation in the health industry”, Dr. Enabulele said.
The NMA leader said the association has resolved to no longer continue to lament on the decay in the health industry but strategize to help in transforming it for the socio-economic progress of the nation.